Page 118 - dubliners

eating-house in George’s Street where he felt himself safe
from the society o Dublin’s gilded youth and where there
was a certain plain honesty in the bill of fare. His evenings
were spent either before his landlady’s piano or roaming
about the outskirts of the city. His liking for Mozart’s music
brought him sometimes to an opera or a concert: these were
the only dissipations of his life.
He had neither companions nor friends, church nor
creed. He lived his spiritual life without any communion
with others, visiting his relatives at Christmas and escorting
them to the cemetery when they died. He performed these
two social duties for old dignity’s sake but conceded noth-
ing further to the conventions which regulate the civic life.
He allowed himself to think that in certain circumstances
he would rob his hank but, as these circumstances never
arose, his life rolled out evenly—an adventureless tale.
One evening he found himself sitting beside two ladies
in the Rotunda. The house, thinly peopled and silent, gave
distressing prophecy of failure. The lady who sat next him
looked round at the deserted house once or twice and then
said:
‘What a pity there is such a poor house tonight! It’s so
hard on people to have to sing to empty benches.’
He took the remark as an invitation to talk. He was sur-
prised that she seemed so little awkward. While they talked
he tried to fix her permanently in his memory. When he
learned that the young girl beside her was her daughter he
judged her to be a year or so younger than himself. Her face,
which must have been handsome, had remained intelligent.

118 Dubliners